This Week in Anime

Does Dragon's Dogma Deliver the Goods?

Nicky
By the gods, I wish. So many anime would increase in quality with the presence of a random Dr. Phil in them.

My life would also improve if I were a skeleton. They're pretty much the only ones who know how to truly live it up in this show because everyone else is a drag. Based on the video game produced by CAPCOM, and surprisingly NOT produced by Polygon Pictures for once, Dragon's Dogma is a 3DCG animated series based on the video game of the same name.

"Based" is used in the loosest of terms here. I also don't have much experience as I've only heard murmurings, but as far as I can tell, whatever existing story or lore basically amounts to a coat of paint thinly slathered on a story of generic D&D-style fantasy man-pain. A genre I will now further refer to as "Mantasy". The rest of the story beats in Dragon's Dogma are so predictable that I could use them to play drums like it's Rock Band.

All the production values are pretty competent. It's got all the direction, sound, and style to try to make you feel like you're in an epic story. It definitely has enough flourish to be entertaining for seven episodes. If you're down for a kind of generic "mature' fantasy story with some heavy action, this might do it for you. But, you still have to overcome the fact that it's a CG anime and that most of the main character's expressions are just this strange little half-snarl.

Actually, the PS3 monsters might be my favorite part of the show. They're faces only a mother could love.

Speaking of mothers, every Mantasy has to have an origin story. This is Ethan and his wife, Olivia. They don't got last names so I'm gonna have to refer to them as the Dogmas. They're a happily married couple in Ye Ole Fantasy Town just minding their own business with their adopted orphan boy and baby in the oven.

For his crimes, the child gets vored first and is NEVER SPOKEN ABOUT AGAIN.

RIP PANPAN. WE HARDLY KNEW THEE. No really. We didn't know him that well.

Yeah, just listen to the important lessons extolled by the ghost of Ethan's Dead Pregnant Wife.

He sure takes that to heart. The next six episodes are Ethan living his life as a humble farmer in the middle of nowhere. End of Story.

Your forgot that Hannah was also Ethan's mother's name, making it EXTRA Freudian.

She basically just shows up out of nowhere and nobody really bothers to explain what a Pawn is other than that they serve Arisen, people who have been chosen by the Dragon. To what end we'll talk about later. But Hannah is pretty much a shell with nothing other than the power to stoically observe how illogical human's are and the power to kill whatever problems arise in any given episode. The show basically functions on a monster-of-the-week type structure. Hannah and Ethan on their way to kill the dragon encounter a problem, kill a monster, and marvel at the ugliness of humanity. Each episode is themed and named after one of the seven deadly sins. Not very subtle, is it?

I found it's cynicism to come off as extremely, for lack of a better term, "Both Sides"-ish. Many of these episodes are about humanity indulging in their baser impulses and it comes off as rather juvenile because it's not anything new. None of this comes off as particularly shocking or deep and at the end it'll exploit platitudes that the audience has likely already heard before. I'd be more shocked if one of these stories showed people actually acting with kindness and forethought in a crisis. It's a bit having its cake and eating it too.

Ah, Humanity's greatest sin: Cuckolding. It's such an MRA-level episode. Every time that woman was on screen I expected the phrase "She said boobily" to follow. The show is also not great at how it handles sexual assault and violence against women. It tries hard to make it a tragedy but it still openly oggles women getting assaulted by goblins, women being murdered, and women getting choked to death. All for the sake of men's pride. They're not necessarily badly written characters, but that's still all that they amount to.

r/relationships post: "I married my(30F) husband(30M) for money but then he lost it all and he has no other redeemable qualities. What do I do?"

Bonus: he does this hilarious rare double anime fist-clench.

The thing is, I'm not even sure if this is the worst one. Most of the writing is like slightly above or below this level.

Thanks! D.A.R.E. Cop Ethan. That sure is kind and not condescending as fuck. Ethan often notices that people are in a bad situation but like he never offers anything helpful other than to kill shit. Part of it is that he sees it as none of his business but part of Dragon Dogma's problem is definitely in the show's framing of said issues. In this episode, the woman, Lennie gets rescued from the belly of the hydra and is able to leave shitty opiumville with her shitty, supposedly changed, boyfriend. But it even calls it out that she might still just be following the path of least resistance like before.

But am I like, supposed to feel sympathetic for them still because they're humans like anyone else? It's a hard pill to swallow when the show barely goes out of it's way to show such characters as actually redeemable.

The first half of the episode is actually pretty fun! Fighting an army of cool skeletons might be one of my favorite fights of the whole show. Added bonus is that Ethan doesn't really do anything and it's mostly Hannah defeating the enemy on a gamble.

Still, they get more character development than like 90% of the cast because they show up for TWO episodes and they make jokes. But then don't think about bemoaning your place in life cuz suddenly that's BAAAAAAAD.

Ethan, while holding the possessed coin actually says a bit of truth here but it's framed as being the words of the devil.

Like, How dare you even think about taking some of the money that they earned and distributing it to those that might need it? Instead of what? Letting the rich reap it all?!

Bro, Bro, we are dead bro. Let's be Scrooge McDuck in the afterlife, bro. This was probably the closest I ever got to having a feeling in this show.

I actually didn't hate this episode as much as that premise. It's actually mostly about exploring Ethan's past and his relationship with Olivia. Ethan and Hannah go to a town to rest because Ethan is determined to make himself even more of a zombie by refusing to take care of himself. While he's there a succubus comes to him in the night masquerading in the image of his wife, having the audience reminisce on his past while she seduces him.

"This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife!"

We got hints here and there of Ethan's relationship to his father and how he starved and dehydrated himself so that his son had a chance to survive out at sea. But uhh, this is pretty much the only development we get of his wife outside of episode 1.

But we never really get anything out of Ethan from it other than him being emo.

Why does she love him? We don't know!! Heterosexuality, everyone!

Thanks for using the most TASTEFUL image we could use of that.

At least I can post Ethan's elusive man-titties and not feel bad.

Dragon: Humanity suuuuuucks, you all suuuuuck.


Okay, Ethan Dogma, show me on the path where you actually learned this. I'm scramblin' here. Was it the druggie town?

AFAIK, this is also absolutely NOTHING and NOT NEARLY AS INTERESTING as the actual ending of the game. This anime could've tried to incorporate any of the games politics or story to make something interesting but instead it just choses to make the most straightforward and rote thing possible.

It's an incredibly not-deep metaphor for the cycle of violence and incredibly sad given the original is a MUCH more interesting statement about duty and servitude. Hannah even throws the GODSBANE, the sword that you get AFTER killing the dragon in order for Ethan to go all rage mode and slay the beast. With no other explanation of what made him stronger than before other than his hate?

Well good news for Hannah is that because Ethan reaps what he sows, he's now selected to become the next Dragon to Terrorize Humanity. Having apparently gone from Emotionless Husk to A Person-Like Object throughout the show, Ethan prompts her that he's going to be burninating the country sides so humanity needs a new protector and it's her.

While it's true she does seem to get a little more keen throughout the show, it's like not really a wide margin.

It's less of a dark fantasy story and more like what aliens or a machine-learning program think a dark fantasy story is.

Even just on Netflix, you'll have a much better time watching The Witcher series if you're desperate for a video game adaption. I'd even rather people watch the messy but fun Rage of Bahamut Genesis if you want an anime with cg dragons.

But dark fantasy, doesn't necessarily have to mean tragedy porn. Having a mature story doesn't have to be gritty and edgy in order to be realistic and as I've aged and experienced more, real-life closely resembles stories where the opposite can be true and I find more value in the stories that go out of the way to show that beautiful side of humanity as well. Dragon's Dogma talks a big game about this, but can't really make a heartfelt argument to save it's life.

Verdict: Make like these random soldiers and fuckin' run! Run from the terror of Dragon's Dogma! ahhhhh